I’ll admit, I’ve been teaching high school English for four years and it wasn’t until this January that I had read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
Jamie Ford’s Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet was my book club’s selection for January and I was pretty excited to read it. With a World War II setting, Asian cultures, and forbidden love, I assumed it would be right up my alley. Well, you know what they say about assumptions… The novel opens with 50-something Henry Lee passing a crowd gathering outside a long-shuttered hotel in Seattle, the Panama Hotel. In the basement, the hotel’s new owners discovered hundreds of suitcases’ worth […]
Robert Galbraith’s Breakout Novel?
We all know that once you see something, it’s not only burned into your retina, but also your mind. And by trying to not imagine a pink elephant, what the first thing is that comes to mind. Is it also possible then, that once I know a book is written by J. K. Rowling, I will always compare it to Harry Potter? The answer is fuck yes. EVERYTHING gets compared to Harry Potter. All other YA books I’ve read? Not as good as Harry Potter. […]
The Tiring of Popcultureboy
It occurred to me while I was reading this book that I have been trying (and failing) to read the whole Booker Prize long list for a really long time now. The first time I attempted it was back in 2004, and I think the reason I have never succeeded in reading the full Booker’s Dozen of 13 books is that some of them I found to be incredibly boring. For every absolute gem (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, I’ll Go To Bed At Noon, […]
Wait until she sees my rich golden shaft
I recently saw Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, with Mark Rylance, on Broadway, in an all-male performance. It was sublime. We are seeing it again next week, so I read the play in preparation. I haven’t read the play – perhaps any Shakespeare – for at least 15 years. It turns out reading Shakespeare is like riding a bike. (Although if you have to get onto a bike after 15 years, it is far scarier than reading Shakespeare.) Viola and Sebastian are twins, shipwrecked and separately rescued. […]
In case you have forgotten how joyous it is to literally laugh out loud
I am shortly relocating from NYC to Seattle, and last weekend, I flew to Seattle to find a place to live. Finding a place to live in three days is stressful, and it doesn’t help that the flight from NYC to Seattle is six hours, so The Rosie Project turned out to be the perfect book. This book is laugh-out-loud funny yet generous towards its characters, while maintaining a sharp wit.